District Court (Third District : Salt Lake County) Probate Case Files
Digital Archives
About the Collection
Case files for Third District Court (Salt Lake County) probate division primarily involve the probate of estates for deceased persons and guardianship for minors and incompetent persons. Probate is judicial oversight of property in transition. Probate of estates is the process by which a deceased person's property is identified and maintained, his debts and taxes paid, and then remaining property distributed to beneficiaries as specified in a will or as required by law for persons who die intestate (without a will).
District Court (Third District : Salt Lake County) Probate case files
Case files for Third District Court (Salt Lake County) probate division primarily involve the probate of estates for deceased persons and guardianship for minors and persons who were deemed legally incompetent.
Brigham Young
The first governor of the Utah Territory and president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon) died August 29, 1877. At the time, the church practiced an arrangement wherein the president held property and real estate as "trustee-in-trust." This allowed Young to direct and finance many major construction and other enterprises during the early years of settlement. Upon his death, it complicated his estate to a great degree. Much of it was settled within about two years, but the case stretched into the 20th century in order to clarify property deeds. Over 500 document pages were transcribed by volunteers in 2021-2022, creating a full text search of this voluminous case.
For more information, see Leonard Arrington's "The Settlement of the Brigham Young Estate, 1877-1879," in Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 21, No. 1 (Feb 1952).
Estate Register
The following list is transcribed from District Court (Third District : Salt Lake County) Estate registers, Reel 1, Book A.
